This information prompted us to a do a quick quantitative comparison between the comparable translator services from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Here's a chart that summarizes the current status of the three websites:

Regardless of the fact that Google has more languages, it's important to remember to also compare quality. Assuming that your languages are supported by more than just one service, we recommend that you compare the two each and decide which one works better for you.

We should also note that while Microsoft and Google both allow any combination of two languages they support, Yahoo only allows translating between certain pairs of languages of the ones that it supports. The fact that Babel Fish is behind Bing Translator is not that surprising, even if Yahoo has a higher market share than Bing. Yahoo is hoping for the Microhoo deal to receive regulatory approval from the US and Europe, which will mean that Bing will be taking the reigns of all search from the two companies regardless. For this reason, Yahoo has likely let Babel Fish remain stagnant.

The last time we took a look at the three services in July 2009, Yahoo Babel Fish supported 13 languages (meaning no new languages have been added since). Bing then supported 15 languages (five more have been added), while Google supported 42 languages (nine have since been added). Microsoft has a much smaller team working on Bing than Google has working on Google, and in this case, the numbers definitely show it. At this rate, Microsoft isn't going to catch up anytime soon.